Boeing’s troubled Starliner is set to finally depart the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, returning to Earth without astronauts after NASA deemed the risk too great.
The century-old aerospace giant’s reputation has been damaged by the booster malfunctions and helium leaks its spacecraft encountered en route to the orbital outpost in June, and the US space agency’s subsequent decision to fly its crew back to a rival SpaceX Crew Dragon . year.
A smooth, smooth ride home is critical not only to salvaging pride but also to Boeing’s prospects of securing certification to fly astronauts in the future.
The Starliner will autonomously detach from the space station around 6:04 p.m. eastern time (2204 GMT), landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at approximately 04:03 GMT.
NASA chose to bring the shuttle home without astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams despite Boeing’s assurances of a safe flight.
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The company conducted extensive ground tests aimed at replicating the technical problems the spacecraft had encountered during its ascent, and devised plans to prevent more problems.
In the end, however, Boeing was unable to convince NASA that it could be trusted to bring back the pair, who were originally scheduled to remain on the ISS for about a week as they tested the Starliner, but will now remain there until February .
“Boeing believed in the model they had built that tried to predict the degradation of the thruster for the rest of the flight,” Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told reporters this week.
But “the NASA team, because of the uncertainty in the modeling, couldn’t get comfortable with that,” he added, calling the mood during the meetings “tense.”
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Certification decisions are coming
After release, the Starliner will perform a powerful “burn” that will shoot it well away from the station to prevent any chance of a collision — a maneuver that would be unnecessary if it had a crew that could take manual control of the ship if need
Overall, the expectation is that the Starliner will successfully land with a parachute and airbag — just as it did during two previous uncrewed tests in 2019 and 2022.
But ground teams will be scrutinizing all aspects of its performance, particularly its troublesome thrusters during the critical “orbital burn” that brings the spacecraft back into Earth’s atmosphere.
Stich emphasized that NASA was focused on completing immediate tasks.
“When we do that, we’ll have a better understanding of when we can certify the vehicle and when we can resume flights,” he said.
NASA awarded Boeing and SpaceX multibillion-dollar contracts a decade ago to develop spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS after the Space Shuttle retires.
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX, however, beat Boeing to the punch, successfully flying dozens of astronauts since 2020.
Source: AFP